When people talk about the more popular forms of social media, the two that inevitably come up are Facebook and Twitter. If you’re on Facebook and you see a great post on your news feed, you can use Share in order to let your friends enjoy it as well. That’s pretty straightforward.

If you’re on Twitter, on the other hand, you accomplish the same thing by retweeting. This function forwards that awesome tweet that you just received, sending it out to all of your followers. But are you aware that Twitter has actually tweaked the retweet function, making it better and easier?

How It Retweeting Worked Before

Once upon a time, if you received a cool tweet that you wanted to share with your friends, you sent along the entire tweet with scarcely any room left over for any accompanying text. At first glance that may not seem like such a big deal, but pause and consider how tone and context fall by the wayside when you communicate on social media.

It’s an unfortunate fact of online life that sometimes posts, tweets, images, or any other shareable content can be misinterpreted if the reader has no idea of the mindset of the author. Is the author being serious, sarcastic, or genuinely clueless? Are they attempting satire or trying to achieve a heightened state of wiseass-ness?

Without any accompanying text, misinterpretation is a very real possibility, and considering how everyone these days seems to be sitting there, poised and ready to be offended at the slightest provocation both real or imagined, is that really something you want to risk?

How Retweeting Works Now

Fortunately, Twitter is now taking away an opportunity for the easily offended to explode into righteous indignation. Now when you retweet, you are taken to a new screen where you can insert your own message. It isn’t much space, only 116 characters, so you won’t be writing up any dissertations to send along with your tweet. However, you will have just enough room to send a quick, pithy message that helps the readers get an idea of what was going through your head when you retweeted.

Another Benefit Of Retweeting

If you have a following on Twitter, you no doubt want to make sure that you regularly send out new messages. But sometimes you just don’t have the time, energy, or even interest in sending out an original tweet. On one hand, you want to show that you’re still active on Twitter; on the other, you’re feeling lazy.

Now with an easier way to retweet, suddenly sending along something awesome that you didn’t have to write yourself is an attractive prospect. And since you can now establish context, the retweet won’t be misinterpreted! It’s a win all around!

So, kudos to Twitter for removing one frustrating aspect of social media.